Evolution and humans: all over Africa (Evolution)

by David Turell , Sunday, May 06, 2018, 15:46 (2391 days ago) @ dhw

dhw:The advance in brain size were specifically almost entirely the frontal and pre-frontal cortex, which is where intelligence and emotions are specifically handled. [/i]

dhw: All agreed until the last sentence concerning compartmentalization, which is thrown into question by the research you quoted under “fMRO: a very critical review again": “…you see activity in a brain region and assign it a specific function. But it’s completely wrong. Multiple functions are subsumed by multiple areas, which are handled by cognitive networks. It’s very complicated.” This is why I prefer to talk of the brain in general, but it may well be that the pfc is the control centre where conceptualization takes place and which sends out instructions to the rest of the brain.

You are totally confused about the brain. Yes, the whole brain is operating all the time, but definite areas as consigned to where the s/s/c does its work, and the thinking area to create concepts is the pfc, nothing else. The pfc does extract known memory facts from the hippocampus and elsewhre in doing the collating of its thoughts, but those thoughts are in the pfc.

dhw: If so, it is perfectly reasonable to suppose that the dualist’s “soul” will expand its set of material controls as it sends out its new instructions, rather than its material controls expanding before it has even thought of any new instructions to send out.

A concept from thin air. The soul drives the the enlargement of the brain? Enlarges the skull and changes the mother's pelvis? I didn't know souls had that power, being immaterial.

DAVID: The concept of the spear developed in a pfc complex enough to think of it.

dhw: Once again you have the brain (pfc) doing the thinking. Pure materialism. (Fine with me, but you keep forgetting that you are a dualist.)

I never forget. I assume you always remember that I have shown the s/s/c has consigned areas of the brain in which to work.

DAVID: Making the spear was done by the other parts of the brain that are similar in size in apes and us. Implementation does not enlarge a brain. Ability to have more complex thought can only come from a more complex thinking area for the s/s/c to use.

dhw: “Thinking area”? We’re talking of expansion here. Are you saying that your immaterial piece of God’s consciousness has to have more space in order to do more thinking? That simply makes no sense! If your immaterial piece of God’s consciousness does not have enough materials to give material expression/implementation to its immaterial thoughts, then it needs additional materials. Hence expansion.

Your response makes no sense in light of my statement. The brain has a thinking area for the s/s/c, the pfc and frontal cortex. That portion enlarged and thinking became much more complex.Implementation is performed by other parts of the brain that did not enlarge in the steps from Lucy to us.

dhw: I’m glad you’ve dropped the starting point argument. I’m sorry you have not been able to tell us of any current studies that support your hypothesis that the brain changes before it has the concepts that require it to change. I have offered my explanation for the pfc expansion. Your God could speciate by designing a brain that thinks for itself and is plastic enough to engineer its own changes.

Your request for studies into enlargement of the brain have no basis of facts in which to work. All we've got is fossils to measure. As for what God did, I feel He was/is in charge of what evolution did/does. His work is the best explanation for the arrival of eh human brain. Your theory simply accepts that.